So far so good for the Kurgan hypothesis

This is basically what I'm seeing in the ancient DNA published to date. Thus, the Kurgan hypothesis or steppe theory, which, of course, posits that the Proto-Indo-European homeland was on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, is looking really good at this stage. Indeed, unless there are some ancient DNA shocks on the way from, say, Anatolia or the Caucasus, that might buck the trend, then this one's in the bag.

See also...

"The Homeland: In the footprints of the early Indo-Europeans" time map

Genetic borders are usually linguistic borders too

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

A homeland, but not the homeland #2

The Out-of-India Theory (OIT) challenge: can we hear a viable argument for once?

A homeland, but not the homeland #2

Back in May, in a post titled A homeland but not the homeland, I said this:

It seems increasingly likely that ancient DNA has identified a massive expansion, or a series of expansions, from Mesopotamia and/or surrounds in basically all directions dating to the Chalcolithic (ChL) and Bronze Age (BA). This phenomenon is mainly characterized by the simultaneous spread of:

- Iran_ChL-related genome-wide ancestry

- Y-haplogroup J

- South Caspian-specific mitochondrial haplogroups such as R2 and U7

In the same post I also included a list of ancient populations that showed at least two of these characteristics. I can now add two more populations to this list: the Minoans and Mycenaeans.

- Anatolia_BA, Western Turkey, 2836-1800 calBCE (Lazaridis et al. 2017)

- Egyptian mummies, Middle Egypt, 776-2 calBCE (Schuenemann et al. 2017)

- Iran_ChL, Western Iran, 4839-3796 calBCE (Lazaridis et al. 2016)

- Levant_BA, Northwestern Jordan, 2489-1966 calBCE (Lazaridis et al. 2016)

- Minoans, Crete, Greece, 2900-1700 BCE (Lazaridis et al. 2017)

- Mycenaeans, Greece, 1700-1200 BCE (Lazaridis et al. 2017)

- Sidon_BA, Southern Lebanon, 1750-1600 BCE (Haber et al. 2017)

Out of all of these groups, only the Mycenaeans are generally accepted to have been speakers of an Indo-European language. However, they differ from the others in that they harbor minor but significant ancestry from a source, or multiple sources, closely related to Yamnaya, Sinatshta and other Bronze Age peoples of the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

Possible question for the discussion in the comments: what does this say about where the Mycenaeans got their Indo-European language? Also, who wants to bet that Bronze Age samples from the Indus Valley Civilization will too make it onto my list?

See also...

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

A Bronze Age dominion from the Atlantic to the Altai

The BEAGLE analysis that I foreshadowed a couple of days ago (see here) is finally done. The output is available for download as a matrix of shared genomic tracts in centimorgans (cM) here.

I haven't yet had a chance to look at the results in detail, but I'd say that the outcomes for the three Early Bronze Age (EBA) Afanasievo and Yamnaya individuals make a lot of sense. The high affinity that these individuals show to the Irish EBA samples is not at all surprising, but striking nonetheless. The Afanasievo people, after all, lived in the Altai Mountains deep in Asia, more than 6,000kms from Ireland.

Update 02/08/2017: Interestingly, the graphs below, based on the cM values in my coancestry matrix, suggest that upper caste Indo-Aryan-speaking Brahmins from Northern India share relatively more ancestry with the Afanasievo genome than Iranic-speakers such as Pamir Tajiks, who generally share relatively more ancestry with the younger Andronovo and Sintashta samples. The relevant datasheet is available here.

See also...

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

Ancient herders from the Pontic-Caspian steppe crashed into India: no ifs or buts